


the torn-up road

by torrentialTriages



Series: crush [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Emotions, Identity Issues, ambiguous kepcobi, overuse of dashes as punctuation, pretentious use of semicolons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 14:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11716173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: But the minutes don't stop. The prayer of going nowhere / going nowhere.- The Torn-Up Road, Richard Siken.set between time to kill and persuasion. everybody's favorite question.





	the torn-up road

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this on a plane because i had nothing better to do. the torn-up road by richard siken is on pages [10-11.](http://library.globalchalet.net/Authors/Poetry%20Books%20Collection/Richard%20Siken%20-%20Crush%20\(Yale%20Series%20of%20Younger%20Poets\).pdf)

**i.**

what is there to say about this?

there was one daniel. and then there were two. and suddenly there wasn't.

kepler's hands are hard on your wrists, and you can feel him glaring daggers into the top of your head as you lean into him, trying to wonder if you even have the right to belong here.

he's giving off heat, and it's welcome here in the hostile chill of the station, but is he welcoming? are you welcome? is the squeezing grip on your wrists, fingers like cables, out of relief that something wearing his second-in-command's skin is back or a desire to break your fucking arms?

the station hisses. your breath is absurdly loud in your skull. his is silent. his face is silent. his body language is silent as the grave, betraying nothing more than a confused anger that you know is the only thing even you will see from him.

"report," he says, eventually, finally, echoes too loud for the silence.

"wh-what?"

"report," he repeats, low and probably less dangerous than your tired paranoid brain thinks. "you are still wearing the si-5 jacket. i still expect a report on the past four days from you whether you are real or not. i'll make my judgement after."

so you report.

 

**ii.**

there were two daniels-

are you the real one?

are you even _a_ real person?

do you belong among these people, on this station, do you belong in this skin you call "daniel jacobi"?

your report is so flimsy. you cannot put yourself into this narrative, even though you are the jacobi that lived. even though this whole mess centers on you. you can only give him a dry summary of what happened in every single legal euphemism you have ever learned from him, cutter, and the entire pr department combined. he can read through the lines himself. his entire career is built on reading between the lines, isn't it?

fuck, you _wish_  he'd just kill you on the spot, real or fake. you can't stand this agony of inscrutable tension, you want someone else to make up your mind for you because you don't have all the answers to the question he's posing yet again.

"are you the real daniel jacobi?"

you don't have an answer.

his grip tightens slightly. you swear your bones creak audibly*. _"are you the real daniel jacobi?"_

you can't answer him truthfully because in all honesty, you're terrified of externalizing any answer, truthful or not. but you don't have any choice. "do you want the truth?"

he stares at you, an unknowable anger maybe welling up in him. "tell me."

"i don't know." you mutter to his bicep. god, now you hope he won't kill you. make up your mind, whoever you are, make up your damn mind: are you _real?_  what do you _want?_

you want to not have to go through these hoops. you want to stop doubting yourself. you want to not have to think again, you want to be a weapon again. not a mess of an indecisive, soft, anxious _human being._ you want to stop feeling like your heart will spill out of your throat and take your guts with it.

he nods.

 

(he hasn't taken his hands off of your wrists.)

 

**iii.**

you see them, don't you, maxwell.

_(and of course, anyone else can see them too, but no one else is looking because they're afraid of what they might see.)_

you see your brother and your commanding officer, locked in a stalemate of an embrace, daniel not wanting to be locked out, the colonel afraid of what he's letting in.

you see them, but what do you do? do you do something about it? do you do anything, like you've been trying for the past four days, trying to crack open the wound, peering into the shell like you, with your outsider's view on humanity and personhood, can _you_ , dr. alana s. maxwell, phd, can you diagnose jacobi with whatever affliction of humanity he's carrying around, letting it fester inside of him?

don't do anything.

don't say anything.

don't watch. the minutes are still ticking down, in case you've forgotten.

just- just keep going - just forget this is happening; you have bigger, better, badder things to do and your own basic humanity has to be examined at some point, as we all do, but there's a deadline and you have to make sure everything is all neatly groomed and all set in its proper place before we can break down, emotionally and philosophically -

there's too much to do first.

you have to be there for each other, but first you both have to _be there_.

 

**iv.**

there's nothing anyone can really do to soothe your guilt or not.

it was self-preservation, did you really think that that - that _thing_ with your voice could ever be human?

personhood, personhood - what makes a person? what makes a human? maxwell lives for these questions, doesn't she, she lives for seeing how far she can push herself into the other, how much other she can inject into humanity until we're all bigger, better, faster, we're so much more than flesh and blood and fat and sinew ~~_(you grasp your arm where it meets your ruins of scar tissue)_~~  if we allow technology into our lives - there's more light for her than for you in transhumanism and artificial intelligence -

you want to be a monster, sure, but at least then you're organic -

even now you're not really sure you're _anything_ you want to be.

the lab results come back. hilbert says you're normal and that does _absolutely_ _nothing_ to help and you almost go to his lab and wreck some more very delicate very important equipment but what good will that do? what makes him think that his _fucking_ opinion matters?

kepler still won't talk to you and it's killing you, but at least you know you can still be killed or at least wounded this way.

 

**v.**

on your best days you aren't even close to human. how is this any different?

you spent four days searching yourself for every last shred of the humanity you got rid of, ages ago, that you crumpled up and tossed in the trash without a second thought when he told you it wasn't entirely your fault your men died because of you. you had to scour yourself for something, _anything_ to reassure yourself that you belong, and now - and now he won't give you an out, he won't do anything that tells you what he thinks of you now.

you can't confide in maxwell. you have jobs to do, you don't want to worry her, when she's already fussed over you for days more than you dared to yourself, you don't want to rip the bandage off at this point.

you're a coward. of course you are. you can't dare open up to her, not when you know you're such a volatile element around her, your oxygen, and you don't want to say something that'll ruin what you two have become to each other. even if you are si-5, you can still have friends. you two are a compound built through the years of clashing against each other, trading electrons until you've found something made to treasure forever, inseparable, growing through the cracks and flowering, and nothing has been able to damage the blooms yet -

but now you're not sure you have anything to give her; you're not sure you have anything to give _him_ when it's all that'll help you.

you're running on anxiety, (")daniel("). you're running on that nauseating gnawing in your stomach, the overwhelming paranoia that won't let you sleep, look in a mirror, threatens to upend your stomach at any given moment, the shaking in your hands that knows you can hear the faint clattering of your fingers if it gets too loud in the silence.

you can't last like this. your half-life is exponentially drawing shorter with every nothing kepler says.

so of course maxwell is the one to shock you back alive, back to humanity.

that's right. you two are siblings. you stick together. you have her back, she has yours. you can't afford to lose yourself.

 

 

 

then you do.

who the fuck is enough of an idiot to store all their napalm in one room?

**Author's Note:**

> *the tensile strength of cast iron.............................


End file.
